(adjoining the city) and Richard II made the fatal mistake of
banishing both combatants. At the Priory in 1404 Henry IV held his
Parliament known, from the fact that no lawyers were summoned to it,
as the "Parliamentum Indoctorum." Setting itself in opposition to
ecclesiastics, it proposed to supply the King's needs by taxing
church-property. As in the matter of the city walls, the church
contrived to avoid bearing its share of the public burdens and the
chronicler ends thus: "Much ado there was; but to conclude, the worthy
Archbishop (viz. Tho. Arundell) standing stoutly for the good of the
Church, preserved it at that time from the storm impending." One
branch of his argument is noteworthy, that as the confiscation of the
alien priories had not enriched the King by half a mark (courtiers
having extorted or begged them out of his hands), so it would be were
he to confiscate the temporalities of the monasteries. Henry VIII had
reason to acknowledge the fulfilment of the prophecy.

Soon after this, in 1423, Coventry showed its sympathy for Lollardry
when John Grace an anchorite friar came out of his cell and preached
for five days in the "lyttell parke." He was opposed by the prior of
St. Mary's and by a Grey Friar who however were attacked and nearly
killed by the mob.

The royal visits which earned for Coventry the title which it still
bears as its motto 'Camera principis' were frequent in this century.
In 1436 we hear of Henry VI being there, and in 1450 he was the guest
of the monastery and after hearing mass at St. Michael's Church
presented to it for an altar-hanging the robe of gold tissue he was
wearing. The record in the Corporation Leet book is interesting enough
to quote: